Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Brew #46: Weissbier

It has been a really long time since I brewed a German weissbier. Too long, in fact two years ago. That's even before I started kegging my beers. Heck, it is one of my favourite beer styles, and perfect for the upcoming warm season.

The recipe is straightforward. I did an acid rest this time as it will improve the clove flavours. I used the Wyeast 3068 yeast, which in my opinion is the best weissbier yeast that there is. It'll generate little banana, but that depends a little on the fermentation temperature.

The wheat malt percentage is quite high at 59%, which is quite high, but still quite common. Wheat malt can be notoriously difficult to sparge as it easily clogs up the mash. I have been impressed by the Bazooka screen in my mash tun as it seems to work really well even with malt bills that are hard to sparge. I tried to batch sparge as quickly as possible and opened the ball valve fully from the start. The mash soon compacted on itself and the grains moved about 3 cm from the walls towards the Bazooka. Alright, a stuck sparge, but it was really easy to get the flow going again. Cutting into the grains with a knife released the vaccuum and the sparge continued at a nice rate. I can very much recommend the Bazooka screen. It's pretty impressive. It is also quite cool that a stuck mash is nothing to be afraid of as one can just cut or stir the mash to start the sparge again.

I decided to add a little melanoidin malt to add some complexity and fill out the body.